Europe will need a decade to clean up its finances and emerge from the current debt crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared Saturday.

Resolving the debt crisis "is a path which calls for much effort, and along which we will have to advance step by step," Merkel said the day after the end of a G20 summit in Cannes, France, which was dominated by the issue.

Greece announced officially Friday that it had scrapped plans to hold a referendum that had enraged EU leaders, ahead of a knife-edge confidence vote which threatened to spark yet more chaos.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said in a statement that he had informed top EU officials "of Greece's decision not to hold a referendum", the first senior Greek politician to announce it so clearly.

LinkedIn suffered its first quarterly loss since its initial public offering roused Wall Street a few months ago.

The setback, announced Thursday, wasn't as severe as analysts anticipated. The online professional networking service invested in an expansion aimed at changing the way people find jobs and advance their careers.

World economic powers will attempt to kickstart the global economy on Friday by boosting funds to fight the debt crisis and encouraging consumers to spend their way out of a threatened recession.

The shadow of debt-laden Greece still hung heavily over the second and final day of the Group of 20 summit in the French resort of Cannes, as Prime Minister George Papandreou faced a late-night vote of confidence in Athens.

Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.

The law, which takes effect November 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday's Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government's Official Gazette.

Occupy Wall Street protesters declared victory after thousands of demonstrators shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports late Wednesday, escalating a movement whose tactics had largely been limited to marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.

As a voice over a bullhorn said "The night is not over, yet," protest organizers told demonstrators to head back to the downtown plaza where the Oakland movement has been based for more than a month. The Occupy encampment across the street from City Hall also was the scene of intense clashes with authorities last week.

World stocks fell Thursday for the fourth straight day as a European deal to bail Greece out of its financial mess appeared to be on the verge of unraveling.

Markets in Europe were down in early trading following another session of losses in Asia. Britain's FTSE 100 dropped 1.4 percent to 5,405.19 and France's CAC-40 lost 1.6 percent. Germany's DAX slid 2.2 percent to 5,833.69.